According to Steinitz's theorem, these two graph-theoretic properties are enough to completely characterize the polyhedral graphs: they are exactly the 3-vertex-connected planar graphs. That is, whenever a graph is both planar and 3-vertex-connected, there exists a polyhedron whose vertices and edges form an isomorphic graph.[1][2] Given such a graph, a representation of it as a subdivision of a convex polygon into smaller convex polygons may be found using the Tutte embedding.[3]

Tait conjectured that every cubic polyhedral graph (that is, a polyhedral graph in which each vertex is incident to exactly three edges) has a Hamiltonian cycle, but this conjecture was disproved by a counterexample of W. T. Tutte, the polyhedral but non-Hamiltonian Tutte graph. If one relaxes the requirement that the graph be cubic, there are much smaller non-Hamiltonian polyhedral graphs. The graph with the fewest vertices and edges is the 11-vertex and 18-edge Herschel graph,[4] and there also exists an 11-vertex non-Hamiltonian polyhedral graph in which all faces are triangles, the Goldner–Harary graph.[5]

More strongly, there exists a constant α < 1 (the shortness exponent) and an infinite family of polyhedral graphs such that the length of the longest simple path of an n-vertex graph in the family is O(nα).[6][7]